This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Recently developed mass spectrometric methods for lipid analyses, especially electrospray ionization (ESI) tandem mass spectrometry, permit identification and measurement of an enormous variety of distinct lipid molecular species from small amounts of biological samples but generate a huge amount of experimental data within a brief interval. Processing such data sets so that comprehensible information is derived from them requires bioinformatics tools, and algorithms developed for proteomics and genomics have provided some strategies that can be directly adapted to lipidomics. The structural diversity and complexity of lipids, however, also requires the development and application of new algorithms and software tools that are specifically directed at processing data from lipid analyses.